Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music by Henry Threadgill and Brent Hayes Edwards (2023) is Henry Threadgill’s autobiography. He predominantly focuses on his formative years in the 1960s, as well as New York City in the 1970s and 80s.
American jazz composer, saxophonist, and flautist Henry Threadgill, born in 1944 in Chicago, Illinois, is writing his memoir at the age of 79. He talks about his childhood, education, inspiration, saxophonist Charlie Parker, history, military service in Vietnam, music, race relations, capitalism, art, establishing the Advancement of Creative Musicians, and much more.
He surrounded himself with choreographers, writers, musicians, and creatives in various collaborative projects all his life, but his closest connections were with his relatives. The first person to inspire him was his grandfather Peyton Robinson, and the first sense to be ignited was sound – the radio was on all day long. It was his mother who took him to concerts. And she had eight brothers and sisters – one of his aunts went to college to study opera, ‘which was fairly unusual. We didn’t even know what the word meant.’ His paternal grandmother bought him his first saxophone.
He volunteered as a musician with the US Arny in 1966, and from 1967-1969, Henry served in Vietnam. He was injured during the Tet Offensive – an interesting time in history that he could have told in a book in its own right in fighting the war, racism, and post traumatic stress disorder: ‘Black people developed an entire arsenal of subtle strategies [to cope with racism] that almost became second nature.’ He recovered in the 1st Australian Field Hospital, but ‘Vietnam stayed with me, and it took me to some dark and twisted places even once I returned to Chicago … It left us [returned servicemen and women] psychologically isolated.’
After Vietnam, and resuming his musical passion, the tone of the book lifts and takes Henry and readers into another world – over 50 years of his musical world. From a regular musician job right out of the army to concerts and events, Henry recounts the gigs, locations, and people – professional and personal: the people who taught him things and those who didn’t.
He ends with his life in Goa, India: ‘I slowed down and paid attention to my senses: the new spices and colors and sounds around me. I would spend hours reading … And above all, I composed.’
Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music is a wonderful and interesting read: sad, poignant, funny, compassionate, and passionate.
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MARTINA NICOLLS
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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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